BINARY BEAT.

It's All Aboard As Intel Moves To Seize Networking Lead

February 22, 1998|By James Coates.

When Intel Corp. called me the other day to suggest I meet with the company's chief of networking, Frank Gill, I agreed a bit reluctantly.

For Intel, which gave the world the Pentium and now dominates the stand-alone personal computer business, being in charge of networking has been akin to being chief medical writer at the Christian Science Monitor.

It's just not their bag, as we used to say back in the '60s.

I doubt that the Monitor is likely to shift gears on medical coverage any time soon, but my run-in with Gill underscores that Intel's wealthy president, Andy Grove, has huge plans to get wealthier still with a new networking strategy.

In fact, Intel has hatched a plan for World Wide Web domination right out of another network project, the Warner Brothers TV network cartoon feature, "Pinky and the Brain," wherein a couple of mice plot to take over the world.

Some of the plumbing involved gets pretty tricky, but the big picture behind Intel's networking ploy stands out naked as a lighthouse.

Intel has jumped in a big way into selling what amounts to the pipes and valves and pumps that make up both ordinary business computer networks and the global Internet as well.

And pretty soon, says Gill with some justification, that plumbing is going to run right through your living room.

Gill came to town to describe an Intel scheme that would give his company the same sort of dominance on the hardware side of computer networking that Microsoft Corp. enjoys over archrival Netscape Communications Corp. on the Web browser software side.

Which brings us, dear reader, to the indelicate subject of plumbing.

Before they can talk to one another via Web browsers, networks must be strung together with wires. Sometimes the wires are copper phone lines; sometimes they're coaxial TV cables; sometimes they are the ultra-high-speed fiber-optic lines called by names like T1 or D3.

In all cases these wires must hook into a network of computers that is, in turn, hooked into the greater global network of networks called the Internet.

Stick with me just a tad longer and we'll get past this primer on plumbing and get to how Gill and Grove are plotting to move Intel beyond today's dominance selling the chips that make desktop computers work to an equal dominance selling the chips that make them network.

The crux of this plan for World Wide Web domination lies in how the computers linked into each of the smaller networks are almost always plumbed together, a technology called ethernet.

Ethernet consists of sticking a networking device called a card into each computer to be joined together, and then plugging all the cards together with wires that look like fat versions of ordinary telephone jacks.

Companies such as 3Com Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Bay Networks Inc. have created a $30 billion industry creating the modems, networking cards, devices called routers and other hardware that make up the ethernet heart of the Internet.

Now, said Gill, Intel aims to horn in on the action by using its dominant position as supplier of PC chips to simply add the circuitry now on the ethernet cards made by 3Com et al. onto the so-called motherboard that carries the Intel Pentium processor itself.

The first of these Intel Inside products with a network card on board already are being sold to small businesses, and Gill said he expects Intel to quickly start selling the Internet-capable motherboards to makers of computers sold to American households.

These computers could be connected to the Internet using the new DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) hookups that phone companies like Ameritech have started selling throughout the Chicago area.

With all that plumbing in place, you will simply go to the store, buy a new computer and plug it into a special DSL jack on your wall next to the phone cord for instant Internet connection at very high speeds, as much as hundreds of times faster than today's modems.

Meanwhile, even as the U.S. Justice Department frets over whether Microsoft Corp. is breaking federal monopoly rules by bundling its Internet browser software with its Windows 95 operating system, Intel is raising a similar issue by leveraging its dominance as a supplier of Pentiums and motherboards to include networking hardware,

In fact, the Federal Trade Commission already is questioning whether Intel has used its dominance as Pentium supplier to pressure customers to buy other products, an issue that surely will get renewed attention with Gill's networking initiative.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether official Washington will view Grove and Gill's plan as a Microsoft-size antitrust issue or just another Silicon Valley-hatched Pinky and the Brain scheme.

Meanwhile the G&G team can do what they always do: plot to take over the world.